The Architect's Files: Pitsou Kedem

Inside the Israeli firm's chic, sunny, indoor-outdoor homes

By The Editors

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22 December 2015

Pitsou Kedem is our favorite California architecture firm, a position not in conflict with the fact that they're actually based in Israel.

Take a look at some of the practice's most covetable residences and you could be looking at the tawny, dry landscape of Marin Country, Silicon Valley or Los Angeles. The considerations — for sunlight, for pools, for indoor-outdoor living — are all the same.

Presumably, it'd take a sizable housing budget to convince the Tel Aviv firm — which primarily produces local residences or the odd commercial project, like B&B Italia's Israeli showroom — to pick up a commision for an American home.

But as far as we know, we only live once. Might as well make it somewhere gorgeous.

The brief for this home was subtitled "In Praise of Shadows," a reference to a 1933 essay on streamlined Japanese aesthetics, echoes of which are apparent in many Pitsou Kedem projects. Note the emphasis on the boxy shadows cast by the checkerboard metal partition.

This home on the Mediterranean coast is 3,000 square feet and oriented to make the most of its narrow vantage at water's edge. According to the architects, an affinity for Bauhaus aesthetics is paired with local affinities, e.g., the white plaster exteriors which emphasize the area's bright blue skies.

Not all Pitsou residences are free-standing: this one's a 6,500-square-foot penthouse atop a new building on Tel Aviv's north side, and it's wrapped in floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding-glass doors along the entire perimeter. What's lost in privacy is won in the killer, 24-hour views of the quickly evolving city. (Also take note of a bathtub mercifully hidden behind a low-slung wall.)